_isolated in company_

The guilt and shame that occupy my head regarding alcohol have become insurmountable. It feels like I am forcing it out of my life for good subconsciously. I have not been indulging during the week, but I have on the weekends. Even when it’s a perfect night, even when I just have two drinks, even when I don’t get hungover, when I remember every moment of the day prior, and when I laugh and have fun the entire night. I’m always left feeling ashamed because I know that I’m not living the way God intended me to.

Yesterday I said I would have 3, I had 5. I almost panicked at the end of the night, but was able to calm myself down and get past it. The eternal struggle this has been with me and my mental health is never-ending. It truly feels like I’ve boiled down every reason and there’s only a half inch of water left in the pot. Ever-simmering, ever-evaporating, ever-running out of reason to keep trying to make it work for me.

.

..

Ive gotten a new job where I enjoy the work I do, the people I work with, and the role I have. My husband and I went on a few well-deserved dates, and I’ve spent the last few weekends with my beautiful family.

I don’t have much to complain about right now. I’m a little stressed but nothing out of the ordinary, and yet, alcohol has the power to steal away every joy of my life because it controls me and I can’t admit that I cannot have a healthy relationship with it.

What’s worse? The shame from saying “yes, I have an issue with alcohol, so I don’t drink it.”

Or, choosing to live a life of denial, even where every time I have a singular sip, I feel like a monster because I know I’m making the wrong choice. That’s a portion of the shame I feel; I know better. But I continue, ever-trying to fit in, ever-fighting with my own head, ever-being too lazy to quit for good….

Because of course it’s not EASY. It feels easy when you wake up refreshed and your emotions are stable and reliable, but in boredom, anger, fear, rejection, a drink is tempting.

DISCLAIMER: self harm, suicidal ideation, theology questioning, pill use, binge-drinking, etc.  

March 06, 2016. 8 years ago

We arrive at your typical two-story, single-family, tan, stucco house in southern California. It’s where the party begins tonight, and the place is electric. I’ve never experienced parties like this one in my adult life because I skipped out on college. There are people everywhere, white noise of chatter and laughter.  

I’m 5’4”, about 125 lbs give or take. My hair is naturally ashy brown; as of late I bleach it blonde. It always pulls red, so the blonde is never white, but yellow. I envy the blonde who can get the perfect white bleach colour. She looks like Charlize Theron; I look like someone uncomfortable in their own self-image, so she dyes her hair to be something else entirely. My eyes are a piercing pale green, something unique in dominant-Hispanic San Diego. It’s weird, people gawking over you all the time, I never believe a word of it. Frankly, it makes me feel worse somehow. I'm glad you like to look at me, but I have a lot of thoughts and emotions in my head, would you care to hear about those? Ironically, I am so insecure and seek approval from everyone, especially my husband. I know that Chris values what his brotherhood will think about me, so when I show up somewhere with a large crowd the first thing that pops in my head is,

"If his friends think he's lucky, based on what I look like, then that will create this protective coating over my instability and he won't want to get rid of me, or think he's made a mistake in marrying me.

This isn’t a thought because I’m conceded, maybe a little, but because that’s what guys do.  

“Nice, man.” 

“You’re a lucky man, dude.” 

So, who’s the best-in-show tonight, I wonder. I don’t know anybody here; it’s just meeting new person after new person. My husband tells me about the guys briefly and then we come to a gathering like this, and I put the face with the name. After tonight, I’ll likely never see these guys again. My husband is going through training to become a Navy Seal and all these dudes just got through Hell-week, this is where 90% of the weakest links are identified and dropped. It’s very prestigious. The likelihood of these guys passing the course in-full and becoming lifelong friends are slim. He’ll pass, though. He passes everything. I’ve met one of the other girls once. She’s sweet, pretty, nice. All the things. She also is two months out from a stint in the hospital recovering from her extensive eating disorder. 

People have overshared with me since I’ve hit puberty and have been able to have an adult conversation; it’s something that was always so puzzling to me. I don’t know why people confide in me. They do it all the time. People tell me shit they shouldn’t. Deep, dark, mortifying secrets at will. It’s insane. I must have a face you can trust. People divulge their word-vomit and wait for an answer from me. Seeking advice about their intimate struggles. It’s ironic, because I’m pretty good at giving advice, but I’m a mental head case my fucking self. She sits and talks to me about her problems, and I zone out for a moment thinking, “this girl would not be telling me these things if she saw my wrist right now... I don’t know, maybe she would. People love to feel related to. You mutilate yourself? I gag myself! Let’s be best friends!” I guess a part of me feels happy that people find me comforting so goddamn quickly. But the irony is side-splitting.  

“So, what do you think about it?” She asks me with biggest look of concern painted on her face.  

“Honestly girl, I think you should just let it ride. Do your best to stay mindful.” This is my go-to answer when I zone out lately. I walk over to one of the guys next to a cooler, “Would you care if grabbed one of those drinks?”  

Of course I get one, I’m fucking hot and these guys are all in the military. Most of them are single and separated from civilization because of the physical, emotional, and mental stress of the training they're in and their balls are probably the size of lemons. So, anything to interact with a pretty female will be thrilling. I'm not the only head case here tonight, because these guys work their asses into the ground all day every day, so when it's time to let loose, they can get really wild. I should be sympathetic to the girl I just blew off, and the guy I'm manipulating for a free beer, but all I’m thinking about is the fact that I’ve starved myself all day waiting for my husband to get off work, I took three of my Trazadone before this get together, and how hard that means this drink is going to hit me in about 15 minutes because I’ve stacked the fucking deck, baby. No food, mood stabilizers, booze.  

I’ve never really been a pill girl. I never did the painkillers that everyone got hooked on in our hometown. These are prescribed by my doctor I have been going to since I was born. Every year since I’ve been sixteen, I’ve been clinically anxious and depressed. Suicidal ideation for a brief period when I was fourteen, terrified of death, terrified to be alone with myself. Bizarre, dark, thoughts at a constant rate. “What if I go insane and kill myself?” It started when a kid I grew up with died. We were ten, and the same age. He got hit by a truck on his four-wheeler. It was the first time that mortality was ever real when I was a kid. I thought, “wow, God really does take some of earlier than he’s supposed to.”

 Then, three years later, at my cousin’s birthday party, I spoke with an older kid we went to school with about what the following year would bring. A junior in high school; he seemed so excited about football season starting the following month. A week later, they found him suffocated with a bag over his head. I guess that’s the source of all the crazy death thoughts when I was fourteen. Now, I’m too chicken-shit to think about ever ending my own life. Not to mention I’m Pentecostal. I’ll definitely go to Hell if I go out like that. These teenage dirt-bag moments are the reason that I’ve been on seven different mood stabilizers over the last three years. More irony, mood stabilizer, I’ve never been more unstable.  

I'm scared of death, but not of doing things that could kill me. I guess my ego is so inflamed that for awhile I even thought I could outsmart God. Well, surely God will forgive me if I die and I’m so drunk, I couldn’t have ACTUALLY meant to commit suicide and He would forgive me of that sin and let me in the pearly gates.

Yah, Michaela, you’re so smart. You can outsmart the All-Knowing you fucking idiot. I pop the mood stabilizers and hope for the high that my second boyfriend got from taking an Opana. It doesn’t happen.

But I’ll tell you what does, my brain chemicals troubleshoot so hard just from the Trazodone that within a matter of minutes I can go from small town Angel, to a toddler that just touched a hot stove, to a suicidal chaos bomb that not a soul on Earth could control. Not even the one that brought me into it.

But that’s not where I am tonight. Tonight, I’m doing a keg stand at a SoCal party in a backyard and navy seals are lifting my legs up in the air while I do it. My life is fucking awesome.

This five minutes of fame is well worth pissing myself when I get home and getting handcuffed in a silhouette of red and blue flashing lights. We take a party bus to Pacific Fucking Beach, yet again.

I am having a blast. I’m meeting people and my husband and I are sharing a car, so I’m quite literally trapped in our 650 sq ft apartment for 12+ hours a day, because 1. I’m not waking up at 3 o’clock in the morning to drive him to base and 2. He’s going to be a Navy Seal. He works crazy ass hours, it’s nuts. But I’m okay. My heads down and we’re gonna make it out of this, because we love each other and love conquers all.

Somewhere in between me making friends and ordering four drinks Chris notices it’s time to go and asks me to get us an Uber. Not because he notices it's late and he needs sleep, but because he sees how wild I am getting and he knows it's a steep, steep fall to the bottom with Michaela. Chris is the toughest man I've ever met, but even I scare him, so he won't tell me the truth on why he wants to go home now.

Fuck. Him. I’m makin' friends. God, he’s selfish. He just wants to control the uncontrollable. Me. I don’t listen to him and now the night starts to gradually get fuzzier.

I order the Uber and get in with him. Two minutes later, I change my mind. “Let me out.” The Uber driver looks at my husband for approval, which sends me through the roof because how dare another man look to another man for O.K. on a choice I'm making alone. Chris says “go head I guess, let her out.”

I step onto the curb and start walking in the opposite direction. Chris is gone now, and I am wasted, alone, in a residential area of Pacific Beach. I pass two dudes and incoherently ask them where I can find this bar I just left and they attempt to help me and then wish me luck and tell me to "stay safe".

It takes about five more minutes for me to realize that I'm fucked and I can't get back to the bar and I shouldn't anyway, so I order another Uber. Yes, five minutes after leaving the $45 dollar one my husband and I were just in, I order another $55 dollar one to trail them and get home within the same hour.

I burst through our front door like the S.W.A.T. team. Chris is laying in bed, and I spider monkey jump on top of him and start swinging on him. Hard. I truly don't remember what I was saying, but I remember fragments of the night now. Somewhere in there I flip a coffee table and shatter our living room window and somewhere in there three cops knock on the door.

My mood goes from psychotic rage, to innocent puppy as soon as I see red and blue flashing lights, considering I just got arrested two months prior. BAC was .24 that time. Tonight it's over .3.

Cop says, "I gotta book someone on a DV tonight or we're not leaving". I volunteer, because even though i'm hammered I know it's all me. He's a young cop, working for the SD sheriff's department, he's Hispanic, handsome, and very fucking calm. He cuffs me, but before he does he looks at my wrist and says "what's the marks on your wrist?" My brain automatically goes to what I tell everyone, "I hopped a fence in Ohio and it cut up my arm." He responds, "No, those marks are dark, they're new, and they're clean. That's not what they're from." I turn and stare at him for like five seconds and say, "I don't do that anymore."

He stares back at me and sweetly guides me out of our apartment. There are people fucking everywhere, not because it's busy in the city, but because I woke up the entire neighborhood and people thought I was murdering or being murdered. Ha, obviously, I'm a screamer. I feel this sensitivity towards this young cop that's arresting me, so he gets a pardon from my rage, but my neighbor across the way does not. She's a tall, beautiful, thin, black woman and she's staring at me getting walked out with pure disgust painted across her face.

Yeah. Ha. I'm disgusted, too. I just stare at her while I'm escorted to the cop car and scream "YOU CAN GO BACK TO BED, PARTY'S OVER!" God, I have a lot of class when I'm drunk and this, is the real walk of shame.

The cop sits me down in the backseat and squats next to the car, he's getting on my level. He has this look of sadness on his face and I really can't explain that. He says "I really don't want to arrest you tonight. I can take you to the hospital if you want me to instead." I just looked at him and out of left field say, "I hope you're staying safe out here.. My brother was a police officer, I know it's a really hard job." This statement invokes painful emotion all over him and he just says "Michaela, I think you need help and I want to take you to the hospital tonight."

"What am I gonna come back from sooner, the hospital or jail?"

He says, "honestly, probably jail."

And all the sadness and emotion leaves my body and I say "Then let's get this over with and take me to jail." He's disappointed, but he's another person that wants to help me and I reject it instantaneously. Another Olive branch extended to me by an empathetic person that sees a damaged girl that needs professional help. I'll engulf that gesture in flames until it's disintegrated into nothing, because nobody can help me.

I went downtown this weekend to meet a friend for dinner. Dinner was delicious; the best oysters I’ve had in the city, chowder fries, followed by our entree, bone marrow. It’s the first time I’ve had it.

Went somewhere after and got the biggest piece of chocolate cake I’ve ever seen. Twenty layers of chocolate and peanut butter. I ping-ponged the idea of an espresso martini or just an espresso shot. I ended up going back and forth about it in my head up until the second I ordered the martini. It was delicious, but I was still critical of myself after ordering one drink in three weeks.

I surprisingly did not feel the urge to have more while we sat and talked. And I’m back to no alcohol at all.

I still get pangs of mourning it though.

Really? Never again? You’re never going to drink again?

I just hate when I don’t feel confident enough to support my decision.

When I tell people I’m on a sober-kick or that I’m not drinking tonight, 8/10 times they’ll try to convince me otherwise.

“Well, can’t you just have one?”

“You aren’t a one drink kind of girl?”

And then to explain myself feels so pathetic. “No, I’m not a one drink kind of girl. Yes, I wish I could control it. I wish it could be different. I wish I could have just one or two and then be done.”

But I can’t.

And to explain this to people in a public setting is humiliating. I fumble over explanation and I trip over confidence. And I don’t want to jump into a 20 minute speech on the real bottom line_ ..

Which is, alcohol isn’t good for anybody; whether you have a healthy, normal relationship with it, or not.

And I won’t do that, because I never appreciated being around a non-drinker and then feeling judged by them for drinking- I won’t do that to my people.

Along with this feeling of guilt and shame of the explanation on why I can’t control it, comes the aggravating fact that we can still have fun without it.

Alcohol does not make a good time a good time. The people you’re with do, the food does, the atmosphere does, the time does. We don’t have to drink to enjoy the night.

My friend kept saying,

“You seem anxious.”

“Is something on your mind?”

Yes, something is on my mind. I’m trying to prove that I’m still fun even if I’m not drinking, but I can’t fake wild, doesn’t give a fuck her.

She doesn’t care. She over-drinks, she is careless, she is free. She is also rude, insensitive, loud, and outrageously insecure.

I’m okay with not being her anymore.. I’m still having fun, just not dangerous, bingey fun.

Alcohol is the only drug that people will try to convince you is good. It’s the only drug people will publicly push on you. And for people like me that have issues with it, it’s hard to explain the pressure it adds to appear normal, to just say no, and to not let the room know that I think about alcohol more than most people. I think about how much is left, how much I need, how much everyone else is drinking, how I’m drinking more than I should, but it’s ok because everyone else is doing the same thing, and it’s exhausting. It’s exhausting to navigate these feelings while I drink, so it’s refreshing to not have them when I don’t.

But it doesn’t mean it’s not hard.

We would drink while we served as waitresses; people celebrated their weddings at the hotel bar.

A whiskey sour for me please-I’ll sip it while I run these tables. We make money, we clean house, we drink, we go home.

I would actually drive at 20 years old after I drank. I’d get done working as a cocktail waitress, go home, wake up, smoke weed all day, and then repeat the entire day.

I was making great money, I just had no idea I was growing into drinking. Trying on that hat until it was broken in.

The job never allowed me to get too drunk. But I still did on one or two occasions.

When I moved to California I was legally allowed to drink, and I did. And it never occurred to me that drinking too much could become dangerous. So I would try to keep up with the men that worked with my husband and I could… until I couldn’t. And when I couldn’t, I would implode.

•

I blame never going to college and figuring this life skill out. Intro to alcohol: course name: ALC-137. So after years of being on anti depression medication we added alcohol to the mix and my brain just got utterly fucked. I can say this now because I’m certain I think relatively normal now. But this time of my life was so scary and reactive that it just became a new normal to medicate with something that brought quick relief and a numbing agent.

I’ve had a blast down town… I just never knew I was growing into it.

Growing into a problem. Growing into anxiety. Growing into desperately trying to control alcohol.

The more I tried to control my internal dilemma with alcohol. The worse the issues got.

You try to control it. The smaller the surface area for normalcy. You try to grip it tighter, the noose continues to tighten around normalcy.

The desperate attempts to make it normal; abnormality grows there.

Went to a party for the first time tonight sober.

For the first time in a long time I was around everyone drinking and I didn’t crave it. At first I was thinking that it would be nice to have a beverage, but I knew if I had one I would be thinking about how to have another.

Ate good food with good people, talked about books, movies, and baby names, drank coffee, and enjoyed watching the UFC fights.

Generally, drinking would get in the way of my good time by nagging at me to have another but giving me anxiety about driving home later. The balance was hard to keep, because I’d have to cut myself off and within the hour I’d be searching for the escape hatch. Then, if I had to stay while my husband enjoyed his friends, I would get angry. Frustrated at the girls, him, and myself.

It’s like as soon as I have a drop I obsess over how I can get the next one. And the thought never leaves me alone. So I’m crabbier with my kids, rushing my husband, and resentful that I’m not the one “allowed” to drink tonight (because we used to switch on and off who the designated driver would be).

Not drinking tonight was the perfect reminder in a week of mourning alcohol, why I gave it up in the first place. I was patient, had fun, barely had the urge to drink, and got my family home safely.

It’s a perk to know that if I got pulled over on a Saturday night at 11pm I could blow a 0.0 on a breathalyzer.

I’m ready

July 3rd, 2023

The last time I drank I told myself, “it will be different this time.” I won’t get too drunk, I won’t feel ashamed in the morning.

But it wasn’t different.

There just came a time when I had to ask myself why I keep doing the same ole thing. The same thing that brings me so much negativity, so much self-doubt, and so much unhappiness. The same thing that proves I can let myself down every time.

It is truly the definition of insanity. Doing the same thing over and over and over, expecting a different result.

And I’m ready to hang up the hat. Alcohol has to go.

There is difficulty in navigating emotions that have been suppressed for such a very long time. I have been trying to pin-point a time when alcohol was being used more frequently.. It was really at the age I could legally buy it. So I reflect on my late teens- or a time I considered myself sober.

But this is also a small lie I’ve told myself for a long time now. Because before I was a drinker I was a smoker. I loved weed so much. I would openly speak on how much I loved it, and how much I smoked it. It wasn’t until I had my first child that marijuana started to give me anxiety and I had to find something else to do.

The last time I was truly sober was around age 16. Funnily enough, this is the same time that my parents were going through a disgustingly, hateful divorce. I’m not blaming my parents, but maybe I just wanted to not feel what I was feeling. So, the perfect storm happened. Anger met sadness and I was predisposed to addiction, so smoking weed and drinking alcohol just became my new normal; It made me feel better because I was feeling less.

June 28th, 2023

I have been sober for a week now. Even in extreme cases, it really only takes around 14 days for the body to rid itself of all of its alcohol.

I’ve found that the hardest time of the day for me is the early afternoon. By 2 o’clock I would generally be stopping by the store and getting ready for my dinner-time routine with wine or a hard-kombucha.

Talking to my friend about it yesterday helped. She let me know that she felt the same way about her drinking that I do about mine. It helps knowing that I’m not the only one that is struggling with this revelation. 

However, after our talk, and the feelings of elation that came from it, I had the biggest urge to drink. Every time I’ve quit drinking I’ve noticed that around the completion of week one I cave. 

March 26th, 2017

I jolt awake in the bathtub, covered in glass. Warm water is still falling from the shower spicket, covering my discolored body. Small scrapes and bruises decorate my 21-year-old legs. No blood-thank God, but the bathroom itself is dismembered. I blink a couple times as consciousness reclaims my brain. I slept in the running shower? The skin covering my fingertips and toes is transformed into what I imagine a drowning victim’s look like within the first five hours postmortem. I rub the pad of my index and thumb together, disgusted inside this half alive body. The rest of my organs are feigning for hydration-pulling it from my exhausted brain; which feels four sizes smaller than it was yesterday. I move my head from side to side and feel it rolling around like my dad’s old bowling ball inside its leather bag. Dusty, sad, and forgotten somewhere inside the barn behind my ma’s house in the rural Great Lakes. Just like me a few months before my big move to the West Coast. Sad, angry, and forgotten, hanging out in the barn before work, scraping black resin off the side of my bowl like a goddamn crackhead. Work, make money, save it, move to southern California…get to be with him. 

I lay there on the tub floor for fifteen minutes more, trying to piece together last night’s events before things start to get too fuzzy. It starts like any normal night. It was my husband’s friend’s birthday. He’s Irish, so I knew while getting ready for the night that getting piss-drunk is on the agenda. And I froth. I get around his friends and I am the hot, funny, quirky girl from the Midwest that can outdrink men double my size. I love this attention. When my husband’s friends look at me like he is so lucky, I feel immense approval. I’m the pick-me girl. But it is so fucking fake and self-absorbed that after the night is over, I want to piss myself and destroy our apartment piece by piece to sabotage it all. 

I’m so depressed lately that when I get pissed off there is nothing like the sweet relief that falls over me when I commit acts of self-harm. I hit myself, cut myself, and put myself in scenarios where serious trauma could fall upon the sacred shell that God gave me to protect, honor, and love. But finding a fuck to give about the fragility of my life seems harder than anything these days. I cry when the smallest icky feeling comes over me. I genuinely do not have the emotional capacity to deal with jealousy, insecurity, and fear, and the pills that I am getting from my doctor don’t seem to be helping me feel happy at all. Sometimes when I’m sad I’ll pop six just for the hell of it. The label reads ‘It’s best to avoid the consumption of alcohol while taking this medication’. What it should say is, ‘drinking with this medication can cause you to rip your house apart and bust through your glass shower door blind with rage.’ Thank God for the safety glass. It’s the kind that just pops into a million sparkling pebbles. I’m pretty sure it’s the same glass they use in car windows now, in case of an accident. What they don’t know is that last night I was the overturned convertible on the side of the highway. At least she didn’t cut herself. I’ll lie to my sweet landlord, Sherry in the morning and tell her that I slipped in the shower and pulled the door down with me. That should keep my drunken episode from getting us evicted.

Our beachfront condo is perfect. Within walking distance to the pier and other good foodie spots. Thai, pizza, a couple of cafes, ice cream, and a surf hut.  It’s fully furnished, so nothing is our own. Afterall, I could barely afford to move myself and what I could fit in my car. It’s a little outdated, but Sherry is an older woman. She was a doctor and her husband still practices. They got money, honey. And I am just a waitress. Sherry loved me as soon as she met me, she fixed and helped me with anything we needed at the condominium, and we shared some intimate talks while we fixed the garbage disposal once.

My mom always said I was the daughter she never had. A small fable she made up to make herself, and I suppose me, feel better that her daughter is liable to jump out of a moving vehicle any time she drinks. It must be so frightening for her to know that 36 hours away I am dying inside. I don’t care. I anxiously anticipate her phone call and her lecture, like I’m sixteen again and got caught drinking in the sticks with an older man. When scenes like last night happen and Colin is scared, he calls her for refuge. 

I replay the night over and over again. Shot, cocktail, beer, cocktail, shot, shot, cocktail, shot, shot. I was sloppy last night, but everyone else seemed to be on the same wave. My friend Christine and I laugh and make fun of the hoity-toity women that our  friend is now involved with. I spilled a drink, and we laughed more. Before long ten o’clock turns into two and the fluorescent lights flick on, and the music stops-any drunkard knows what that means. We walk outside and we wait for an Uber XL to take the seven of us back to our beach town by the border of Mexico half-an-hour away. 

Our Uber is a massive van, like it’s time to head to church. We pile in one after the other. Colin and I are together in the middle row and we’re about 10 minutes out now. Everybody in the van must have passed out because after leaving the bar where you had to talk two inches from each other’s faces to hear, the van is now engulfed in silence. I can’t sleep yet. I’m looking out the window and thinking about my nightly routine when I get home, hitting my bong, eating Cheez-Its, not brushing my teeth and passing out. 

A common misconception that we feel as drunks is that we are more desirable the farther down the bottle we fall. This pride befalls me every time I drink and sex with my husband, Colin, is the most leg-shaking, intimate fuck. It has to be a part of this nightcap. I think if everyone is passed out now, I should be able to sneak in a make-out session before we make it home to let him know what’s on my mind. I put my hand on his thigh, lean over and French him all in one swift movement. He instantaneously puts his hands on my biceps, picks me up, and puts me back in my seat, all while saying “Get. The fuck. Off me.” I blink open my eyes and stare into the face of Christine’s boyfriend Kurt. I frantically look around for my husband. He is in the back row of the van and is completely passed out. The car and the night fall silent. Silent with shame, silent with stupidity, silent with the lack of basic motor skills. I send Colin a text from two feet away, “Some weird shit just happened. I need to talk to you.”

We get to Christine and Kurt’s house first. I get out of the van with them because I think I am home. I run to Christine and looked at her crying, “Christine I am so sorry, it was an honest to God accident, I would never do that, I thought Chris was next to me. I am so sorry.” She looks at me sweetly, grabs my shoulders, pulls me in to peck my forehead and says, “Babygirl, I know you would never do that, and I know it was an accident.” Kurt has long since beelined for the house. 

Colin and I get home and we head upstairs. He says, “What did you want to talk about?”

I gulp, “I accidently kissed Kurt in the car on the way home. I thought you were sitting next to me.”

He says, “Wait, you cheated on me?”

“NO. No no no no no. It was an honest mistake and accident. I leaned over, the van was pitch dark, and I thought you got in behind me. I did not cheat. You were right behind me and even if you were not, I would never cheat on you, I love you.” Gobbledegook at this point of the night.  

“What the fuck, Mckenna.”

“I’m sorry.” I’m sobbing. Even more disgusting than my false sex-appeal forty minutes prior, my makeup is running, my nose is dripping, my eyes are swollen red now, because I finally have this human that remains devoted to me, who’s as angry as I am, but loves me for it and I am about to lose it, because the accident sounds vile, I clearly cannot outdrink the men I choose to party with, and I am an emotionally unstable, Trazodone-prescribed wreck. 

Colin goes to bed, obviously humiliated by his sloppy wife. I spark up a small bud of my California dream indica, and whoop, my bong falls out of my hands and shatters on the marble floor. I don’t remember cleaning up the glass, but when I walk to the kitchen the next morning the mess is gone. 

I am now hunched over the tub, using the broom pan to scrape up all the glass from the shower door. I look no better than Gollum, C-shaped posture, wreaking of alcohol even after a four-hour shower, my guts feel like they are rotting from the inside, and my mouth is completely deserted of any saliva. Ha ha. My body is literally trying to suck itself dry. I have small divets in my thighs, it looks like cellulite, but it’s actually where those small sparkly crystals were pressing into my skin between the tub floor and my ass. 

So, my bong is broken. There goes using weed for my hangover. But what happened after that? Colin clearly needed space. I vaguely remember following him around the house like a pound-puppy. Pathetic and shamed. I remember trying to rip the shower door off its track and the sound it made when it hit the floor. Boom. It was louder than a gunshot in our tiny bathroom. That’s the only reason I remember. Jesus, after the bong broke even my consciousness was like, “Welp, time to go.” I don’t even want to be around myself. 

I charge my phone and I have a picture message from Christine. It’s Kurt on the couch making the kiss face of a thirteen-year-old girl with her first digital camera and throwing up a peace sign. It reads... 

“Kurt wants you to know that these lips are exclusively for Christine.” ha. Ha. I’m glad they know I would never do that on purpose. It’s hard to laugh because I have humiliated Colin with my drunkenness, and I guarantee he does not find humor in what happened last night. 

She texts me again and says, “we're going to the pier for lunch, come down.” 

I ask Colin if he wants to go, he says he’s going to play PS4 for a little bit. He’s probably going to jerk-off and imagine he’s not married to me. I can’t be mad, who could blame him. He says he might come down in a bit. He seems surprisingly O.K. today... 

I walk down there, still clearly dealing with the aftermath of the night before. The sand down here has gold flakes in it, and they sparkle and shine depending on the angle you are looking at them. The midday sun is too hot to handle today. At least it’s not humid like it is back home in Ohio. Home. We still call it home even though home is now the city an entire country away. The thought of returning to Ohio in the state I am in, where everybody knows everything, sounds like suicide. The day is full of people on the beach, kids who haven’t yet gained consciousness of the shitty reality life can be, grannies power walking with gallons full of water. That will never be me if I keep going the way I am. I let the water soak my feet. In and out, in and out, like a dance only mother nature knows how to do well. Each wave washes over me a clarity that I am unwilling to acknowledge. I am 21 and I might have a drinking problem. I do not need alcohol to get through my day, but I surely abuse it to the point that it becomes downright dangerous. I don’t want to be the next John Bottom and choke on my own Belvedere flavored vomit. I do not want to go out like that. How ashamed would God be? This moment on the beach feels like one of those cathartic experiences that you see in the movies. Those always feel more romantic and eye-opening than the disdain I feel for myself now. 

Why does Colin love me? Why do I have a drinking problem? Why am I so fucking hateful. Why does Colin love me. I swallow it all now, like a shot of whiskey. I’ll file that away until I have to dig it out when tax season comes.